Boston Flora

Tag: Margaret Roach

  • Saturday, March 5, 2:00 pm – At Home in the 365-Day Garden

    On the last day of 2007, Margaret Roach made the life-altering decision to walk away from New York City and her job as EVP/Editorial Director of Martha Stewart, a career many would describe as highly successful. But she craved completely different rewards: solitude, a return to the personal creativity of writing, and a closer connection to nature and her first passion, the garden she had been making on weekends for 20 years. She moved to a rural New York State town of 300, began AWayToGarden.com (called “the best garden blog” by The New York Times and named for her prize-winning 1989 book), and wrote her dropout memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There. On Saturday, March 5, beginning at 2 pm, Ms. Roach will discuss how you can have a visually exciting landscape every day of the year – if you know what to plant, and also (just as important) how to “see”. As on her website, she’ll deliver both “horticultural how-to and woo-woo”, encouraging not only the smart use of great plants but also an intimate connection between the gardener and the garden, even in its most subtle moments. Copies of And I Shall Have Some Peace There will be available for purchase and signing after the lecture. The program will take place at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston, and there is a $15 charge for THBG members, $20 for non-members. For more information, and to register, log on to www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Saturday, February 19, 2:00 pm – At Home in the 365-Day Garden

    Berkshire Botanical Garden presents noted author Margaret Roach on Saturday, February 19, (snow date February 20) 2 pm, at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA, for the 2011 Winter Lecture, “At Home in the 365-Day Garden.”

    Margaret will discuss her own gardening journey – highlighting personal experiences leading to the creation of a beautiful, year-round landscape. She will present slides of plants and vistas of her own inspirational garden to illustrate her approach to making a non-stop, year-round garden along with sprinklings of her unique and irreverent sense of humor. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet the woman behind the highly successful garden blog, Awaytogarden.com, where she provides informative posts, photos, links, and whimsical meanderings from her 2.3 acre zone 5B garden in the neighboring Hudson Valley.

    This lecture also marks the debut of Margaret’s memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, documenting her transition from working at high-powered jobs in Manhattan, (Martha Stewart Living, New York Times, Newsday), to living full time in the country, reinventing her life, and creating a 365-day garden. A recent gold-star rating by Kirkus Reviews describes And I Shall Have Some Peace There as “a moving, eloquent and joyously idiosyncratic memoir.” A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.

    Proceeds from the Winter Lecture support Berkshire Botanical Garden’s popular Horticulture Certificate Program and other Education Programs, which provide hands-on workshops and classes to children and adults year-round. Additional information on education programs can be obtained through the Garden’s web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.

    Tickets to the lecture are: $35 Garden Members / $42 non-members, and group discounts are available. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For more information and to reserve tickets, call Berkshire Botanical Garden at 413 298 3926, or visit the web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Friday, August 27 – Sunday, August 29 – Hollister House Garden Study Weekend

    A gardener’s dream: seminar, rare plant sale, gala reception, and tour of exceptional gardens.  Speakers at the Hollister House Garden Weekend, August 27 – 29  include Peter Wirtz, Page Dickey, Margaret Roach, Jill Nokes, Dick Button, Hitch Lyman, and Adam Wheeler. Pre-registration is required.

    The art of gardening as a channel of personal as well as cultural expression will be explored in depth in a program of stimulating lectures. The keynote speaker is Peter Wirtz, scion of the renowned Belgian architectural landscape firm Wirtz International, who will speak on Personal Expressions in the Garden, and be joined by other outstanding horticulturists. The weekend gets underway with a gala cocktail supper Friday evening where participants may informally mingle with the speakers and fellow garden enthusiasts in the gardens at historic Hollister House in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

    Saturday’s symposium takes place at the nearby Montessori School in comfortable, air-conditioned spaces with up to date lecture facilities. A delicious buffet luncheon, a sale of beautifully written and illustrated garden books and a plant sale featuring a select group of New England’s finest specialty plant growers, plus a ‘show & tell’ plant colloquy are included in Saturday’s all-day agenda.

    Other thought-provoking speakers on the roster are:
    • Page Dickey, a popular lecturer and prolific garden writer of, among other books, Gardens in the Spirit of Place, the award-winning Breaking Ground: Portraits of Ten Garden Designers, and to be published in the fall of 2010, Embroidered Ground;
    • Margaret Roach, a journalist who became a major force at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and is now a garden blogger with a devoted following;
    • Jill Nokes, a landscape designer and author whose latest book Yard Art and Handmade Places is about 20 Texans who have been astonishingly creative in transforming and decorating their yards and gardens;
    • Dick Button, a former Olympian and figure skating commentator whose North Salem, NY garden is an explosion of color, self-described as “an anything-I-like garden.”

    In the afternoon – two outstanding plantsmen – garden designer Hitch Lyman and nurseryman Adam Wheeler of Broken Arrow will debate the merits of the best plants for late season gardens during the “Plant Show and Tell.”

    There will also be a Rare Plant Sale with opportunities to purchase choice plants for the late season garden from Broken Arrow Nursery (Hamden, CT), Loomis Creek Nursery (Hudson, NY), Falls Village Flower Farm (Falls Village, CT), O’Brien Nurserymen (Granby, CT), Pergola (New Preston, CT), Opus (Little Compton, RI), Rocky Dale Gardens (Bristol, VT), and Sunny Border Nurseries (Berlin, CT).

    Garden books, selected by Washington Depot’s treasured independent bookseller The Hickory Stick, will also be for sale, many authored by the symposium speakers and available for signing.

    The weekend’s grand finale is on Sunday when the Garden Conservancy opens six exceptional private gardens in New Preston, Roxbury and Washington as part of its Open Days Program. Four of them — Stiteler Meadow, Muddy Rugs, the garden of Norman Sunshine & Alan Shayne, and the garden of Mrs. Michael Wiener — are on the Open Days circuit for the first time. The two others are the esteemed gardens of Martine and Richard Copeland and Georgia Middlebrook.
    Hollister House Garden is also featured on the Sunday tour.

    The weekend package includes the Friday, August 27 Gala Cocktail Supper, Saturday, August 28 Continental Breakfast, Seminar, Lunch, Plant & Book Sale.  $230 for members of Garden Conservancy or Hollister House Garden, $240 for non-member.  You may register online at www.hollisterhousegarden.org, or call 860-868-2200.

  • Saturday, March 27, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm – Spring Forward

    Learn tips and techniques for 365 days of gardening with garden experts Bob Hyland and Margaret Roach, on Saturday, March 27, from 10:00 – 1:00 at the Berkshire Botanical Garden (www.berkshirebotanical.org).  This is a hands-on workshop devoted to preparing for the upcoming gardening season, and will cover a “to do” list packed with detailed tips and techniques.  Learn about soil/bed prep, garden clean-up after the long winter – what’s really necessary and when shortcuts are appropriate.  Consider cool season techniques, what’s myth and what’s most useful.  Consider cool season container plantings – violas, pansies, arctotis, osteo’s, and prepare cuttings for summer containers, ensuring a supply of plant favorites from previous seasons.  Learn about new perennials and shrubs for 2010.  The speakers will share their thoughts on color trends (what’s in, what’s out) and how to read between the lines in catalog hyperbole.  Margaret and Bob will bring some of their very favorite plants and the botanical garden will lend its fabulous scented geranium collection for cuttings.  Finally, participants will transplant newly propagated woody shrubs.

    Bob Hyland is former vice president of horticulture and operations at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and worked for 25 years in leading public gardens on both coasts, including Longwood Gardens and San Francisco Botanical Garden.  He is currently co-owner and principal of Loomis Creek Nursery in Hudson, NY.  He is the author of Designing Borders for Sun & Shade.  Margaret Roach is the former garden editor and editorial director of Martha Stewart Living.  She currently gardens in Colymbia County, NY, where her garden has been open for the Garden Conservancy Open Days program for eleven years.  Her book, A Way to Garden, was named best garden book of the year in 1998 by the Garden Writers Association of America.  Margaret launched her garden blog www.awaytogarden.com in 2008 to great national media acclaim.  Members of BBG – $45, non members $50.

    http://img.infibeam.com/img/7cacf150/716/8/9781889538716.jpg